These days, whenever you're talking with mostly
college-aged or younger people, or those who aren't on the
higher end of the income spectrum, there's a couple of extra
'kinds' of free when it comes to software beyond the
normal shareware, abandon/freeware, open-source, etc.
There's
'free-to-me'/'free-if-I'm-not-caught'-ware. This happens a
lot with products that are almost universally considered best in
their field at what they do, but are, of course, multi-hundred,
sometimes even thousand(!)-dollar software packages. Photoshop is
a prime example of a piece of software that almost nobody outside
of professionals (who can';t get away with not paying license
fees) actually buys. I';m about as useless with graphics as a
blind potato, so I';ve not bothered to go find some
illegitimate copy, but the point is, there are probably at least as
many people who don';t buy it as do.

But it doesn';t have to be like that. I';m not going
to say that Adobe should open up and give away their software for
free, or that proprietary software is inherently evil (it is
metaphysically, but less so practically), but that there are good
programs out there that are free, on purpose. And
they';re good. Really good. At least, some of them
are. I';m a fan of free, because it doesn';t cost money,
which I don';t have, really. I';m also a fan of
open-ness, which is like free as in freedom (to steal shamelessly
from the open-source folks).

When it comes down to it, most people think that free is often
second-rate, shoddy, or otherwise inferior; why else would it be
free? Chalk it up to intelligent communities, new social forces,
or the difference between intellectual property and
'real'; property, but the open-source communities out
there have created some amazing things. I';m not going to
particularly harp on how awesome they are; but, well, they
are awesome. What it comes down to is this, free can be
better than anything you could pay for, it can also be much worse.
So how do you find what you need, sort the wheat and chaff, so to
speak?

You come right here. That';s right, I';m starting a
sort of semi-regular review of software that isn';t just free,
but good and free. Today I';m going to go over the,
in my opinion, holy triumvirate of desktop applications: the media
player, the instant messaging client, and the web browser.

First, because this is such a huge category, each one could take
many many articles of its own, I';ll set up a few
restrictions. Whatever I find, has to run on multiple operating
systems, at least two of the major three (Windows, Mac OS X,
GNU/Linux). Secondly, nothing "weird," just normal
applications this time. No network streaming music players or
text-based web browsers this time. Thirdly, no crippleware,
nagware, or abandonware; we want something current, and, if not new
exactly, maintained and actively developed. A dead project may
work now, but it won';t forever, and I like to use software
that works, and will continue to work.

Web Browsers:

Right, I';m not going to say a whole lot about these, as
more recently there';s been a bit of a revolution regarding
web browsers, with Mozilla';sFirefox gaining
a lot of market share. The other major free option (though,
unfortunately not open) is Opera, which is
currently more web-standards compliant and, I think, much faster
and easier on the computer. Firefox does
have the advantage of a gigantic user community of very talented
people with many extensions, but most of the really usable ones
(enhanced tabs, mouse gestures, sidebar bits, and undo-close) are
all built right into Opera. I use Opera, so
that';s my vote, but many people like Mozilla';s
offering, and it definitely has mindshare. Both are available for
practically and OS you could run, so try them out, run them both,
and choose for yourself.

Instant Messengers:

Here';s where I think a lot of people are missing a truly
superior product that is absolutely free: Gaim. It supports any IM protocol
you could possibly use including, AOL, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber,
GaduGadu, IRC, ICQ, and many more through plugins. It has plugins
for history, logging, dynamic profile generation, a psychic mode,
new message notification, and is about as configurable as software
can get without being overcomplicated. I use it, and if you IM,
you should too. Gaim itself is only
directly available for Linux and Windows, but a natively ported
version, Adium is
available for Mac OS X. I';m sure there are some other
wonderful free IM clients, but I';ve never had a need for one.
If you have some particular love of something like Trillian please let me
know, though I';d almost call it crippleware because they have
a "pro" product that isn';t free. The only other
client that might be as cool as Gaim could be Google Talk,
which has voice chat, which is still in development for Gaim. (The
other interesting option, though not particularly IM-related, is Skype, Gizmo, and
other VOIP systems.)

Media Players:

This is where things get sticky. Everyone has their preference,
to a degree. I was a fan of Winamp for a
long time, but it got really slow and big and just didn';t
impress me much. Plus, I switched my main computer to Linux, so
there went that. The most versatile free media player I';ve
yet come across is VLC, or Video
Lan Client, though nobody calls it that. This little guy has all
it';s own codecs, so if you use windows you can play things
that won';t with any other player. It';s also incredibly
robust on weird and badly formed (corrupted from download or
otherwise) video files, as it is designed with streaming video in
mind. In fact, VLC comes with the ability to stream audio and video
out of the box, no setup required (Though you do need to know what
you';re doing). VLC can even play encrypted DVDs, though in
the United States this is technically illegal as the libdvdcss
library it uses to do so violates the Digital Millenium Copyright
Act (DMCA). Complain to your congressperson, or donate here to fight this
idiocy. Other than a little hiccough when it comes to the legality of
playing encrypted DVDs (your home movies are perfectly legal), VLC
is the best overall player I';ve yet to find. One caveat, and
this goes for every free media player, is that VLC won';t play
DRM-protected/copy-protected music files purchased from most online
stores. This is a violation of your fair-use rights and all, but
it';s not VLC';s fault, blame the RIAA, MPAA, or whoever
passed the laws. Link above applies.

Again, VLC will run on any modern operating system, and runs
pretty much identically on all of them. It';s solid, and
all-around the best media player money can';t buy. On a day to day
basis I use AmaroK for my
music playing and mplayer for
videos on my Linux machine, but those aren';t widely available for
other OSs. Other players that are available that could be of
interest include Media
Player Classic and Songbird,
a music player based on Firefox (above). I really want to check
Songbird out sometime, but I';be been quite busy with school and
all that. If someone wants to check it out and review it, I would
certainly feel like posting it as a follow up. Or, really,
anything I';ve missed that you think is essential in one of these
three categories.

That';s all for now. More when I get some time to do research.

Next up: Virtualization, try an OS without breaking your computer.

Note: This entry imported via Facebook's Note feature from my old website, much is expected to be broken.